OMG! Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past

We have no idea if centuries from now, the very simple womanly act of using mascara may create shock amongst our future descendants

Who knows what science is yet to discover about the lotions and potions we use, that will gross out our great-great-grandchildren when they imagine us applying them every day to look good.

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past

Will they feel the same way as you will when you read what our ancestors did to make themselves beautiful? We have compiled some of the weirdest beauty rituals from the past, rituals that they honestly believed were a great idea at the time!

1. Curing Baldness in Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greeks would combine opium, pigeon droppings, spices, beetroot and horseradish into a lotion that they would smear over their bald patches. An alternative recipe was to mix feces, menstrual blood and urine with animal fat.

2. Breath freshening in Ancient Rome

The Ancient Romans would import Portuguese urine to gargle for fresh breath, as it was deemed more potent than local the pee. At least technically it is sterile!

3. Crocodile Dung Bath

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Crocodile Dung Bath

The Ancient Romans and Greeks shared in this revolting beauty ritual – not only would they bathe in a mixture of regular mud and fresh crocodile feces, – they also swore by smearing it on their faces as an anti-aging mask!

4. Shiny Urine Hair

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Shiny Urine Hair

In Ancient Arabia, camel’s urine was believed to make your hair shine, so women would dip their hair into vats of the stuff. It turns out that urine has been revered for centuries as a hair potion, as even in Medieval Venice, lion’s urine was imported for the ladies who would rub it in and then let it bleach their hair in bright sunlight.

5. Squashed Insect Lips

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Squashed Insect Lips

In Elizabethan England, if you stepped on a bug, you would scoop it up and use it as lipstick. This ghastly trend was started by Queen Elizabeth I herself!

6. Tapeworm diet

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Tapeworm diet

Throughout all of history women have gone to insane lengths to lose weight. One of the most absurd methods used was during the 1800s, when they would literally swallow tapeworms in the hope that they would consume the food that arrived in their gut, preventing it from landing on their thighs.

7. 19th Century Breast Implants

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – 19th Century Breast Implants

If you wanted to increase your breast size, in the days before silicone, your options were to have balls made of glass, ivory or ground rubber inserted into your boobs. Definitely would not have been a “natural look.”

8. Beautiful Black Teeth

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Beautiful Black Teeth

In Japan, during the Meiji era, it was only the unmarried women who had white teeth. If you were married it was a must that you had teeth as dark as a starless night. They would produce the desired effect by first priming the enamel with pomegranate rind, and then applying a black dye made from gallnuts from the Japanese sumac tree, and iron filings.

9. Rat brows

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Rat brows

Why keep your own eyebrows when the hide of a mouse will suffice? In Victorian England, women desired a definitive shape for their eyebrows, and felt it would save them time to create these by using the furry skin of a rodent.

10. Deadly Weight Loss

Weirdest Beauty Rituals From The Past – Deadly Weight Loss

It became fashionable in Edwardian England for women to consume small amounts of Arsenic in order to lose weight and appear “embonpoint,” in other words to look sexy. If you were willing to risk goiters, you were assured you would build up a slow resistance. And you had to remember to only take it when the moon increased its glow!